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Game of Thrones: Cersei’s Diabolical New Plot Is Several Seasons in the Making

This post contains frank discussion of Season 6, Episode 8 of Game of Thrones. Leave now before we light this place up with spoilers.

For a brief moment things looked pretty grim for Cersei Lannister as her son, King Tommen, declared she wouldn’t be able to use the Zombie Mountain to fight her battles for her in her upcoming trial. But seconds later, her right hand man, Qyburn, came to her rescue with this tantalizing exchange. “That old rumor you told me about. My little birds investigated,” he told her. “Is it just a rumor or something more?” she asked. His reply?

That’s right, Cersei has a new plan and if you, regular old show watcher, are confused, you should be. We never saw Cersei send Qyburn on this particular mission. But book readers have a suspicion they know what’s coming and it’s something Cersei has been promising for several seasons.

Heck, even Jaime mentioned something similar in this episode. Should we go ahead and change the official Lannister motto to: “Burn Their City to the Ground?”

So what could an old rumor have to do with Cersei’s fire-happy threats? Well, the show thoughtfully reminded us a few episode ago that there’s an enormous cache of wildfire hidden under the city thanks to good ol’ mad king Aerys.

Given that Jaime killed Aerys before he set off that wildfire, many suspected that the scene in Bran’s vision of the green flames erupting underneath King’s Landing was, in fact, a flash forward, not a flashback. So, does Cersei plan to burn King’s Landing (or at least the Sept) to the ground? If she does, we may want to blame Lady Olenna for planting the idea in her head last week.

In those scenes above when Jaime and Cersei talked about burning down cities and Houses, it was always in reference to losing their children. Thanks to her childhood prophecy, Cersei has been paranoid throughout that she’d lose her children to death or someone else’s influence. “You want to steal my boy, my last boy,” Cersei hissed at her father, Tywin, back in Season 4. “Margaery will dig her claws in and you will dig your claws in and you will fight over him until you rip him apart. I will burn our House to the ground before I let that happen.”

In this episode, it was Margaery and the High Sparrow’s influence that got Tommen to basically pass a death sentence against his mother. She’s lost her last child and she will not go gently into that good night about it. In the fourth book of A Song of Ice and Fire, Cersei goes a little HAM on the Tower of the Hand during Margaery and Tommen’s wedding feast. Believing her brother Tyrion (who just killed her father) to be hiding there, she blows it up using wildfire. It looks like Game of Thrones might be saving that plot for an explosive Season 6 finale. By the time Daenerys arrives to conquer Westeros, she might find ash, not snow, falling on the King’s Landing throne room. Maybe this inevitable conclusion dates all the way back to her Season 2 vision.

Extra Bonus Spoiler Section

There’s some added speculation that if Cersei were to go through with this wildfire plot, it won’t just be the Tyrells and the Sparrows feeling the burn. Rumor has it that, one way or another, Tommen may not last through the explosion. That would mean it’s not just Cersei and Jaime making good on their fire metaphor threats.